Category Archives: Working

Perception Is Everything – For Photo Editors

One of the mistakes I made as a photo editor early on was copping a “can do” attitude when it came to finding photography or making assignments. I figured I would just work as hard as I could and the end result was what it was. The problem with this is nobody factors in the [...]

How To Photograph The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

I remember several years ago sitting in a meeting talking about “the great pacific garbage patch,” trying to come up with a way to photograph what we felt was an important story. A floating patch of plastic garbage somewhere between twice the size of Texas and the size of the U.S. was out there but [...]

The Business Of Photography – Books

John Harrington sent me his latest book “Best Business Practices For Photographers” and at over 500 pages It’s a real door stopper. It has the look and feel of a college text book: loaded with examples, little notes sections along the way, 32 chapters and a cover image/design that screams textbook. For anyone looking for [...]

Oyster Hotel Reviews – Hotel Photo Fakeout

I like this new hotel review site, Oyster Hotel Reviews, because they understand how powerful the editorial voice can be when making a buying decision and they understand a photograph will convey the most information in the shortest amount of time. They’ve hired a bunch of writer photographers to go check out hotel properties and [...]

Peter Yang and Rolling Stone Win Magazine Cover of the Year

I’ve sat through too many meetings where badges, sashes, boxes, hairlines and an entire dump truck full of coverlines were added to perfectly good cover images or instead a meeting where perfectly good cover images were thrown out in favor of images that held coverlines better, to not point out the irony of a winner [...]

A Cautionary Behind-The-Scenes Video Tale

This cautionary BTSV story was submitted by a reader:
On a recent national advertising shoot we used our back-up camera, my new 5D MKII, to shoot some behind-the-scenes footage of me at work. We edited it down into a 3-minute video that we posted on my Facebook Group page. It wasn’t particularly exciting, but it [...]

Untitled – The Movie

This movie looks funny as hell. “What attracts me to his work is how uncomfortable it makes me feel.”

How Do You Decide What To Charge?

Taking a cue from the Creative Review Blog I wanted to ask my readers as well: How do you decide what to charge?
Here’s an excellent Cost of Doing Business Calculator (here), where you input your desired salary, then add up all the business expenses that can’t be billed back to the client and it gives [...]

Matt Mendelsohn – The Lessons of Lindsay

In 2007 Matt Mendelsohn heard from a friend about a recently graduated fashion student who had all 4 limbs amputated. At the time she was near death but soon turned the corner and a year later was teaching fashion at her alma mater, Virginia Commonwealth University. Matt, a longtime journalist, decided he needed to go [...]

APhotoEditor Is Taking The Week Off

see you next week.

Ten Things I Have Learned – Milton Glaser

1. You can only work for people that you like.
2. If you have a choice never have a job.
3. Some people are toxic avoid them.
4. Professionalism is not enough or the good is the enemy of the great.
5. Less is not necessarily more.
6. Style is not to be trusted.
“… the point is that anybody who [...]

Sir, We’re Not The Taco Stand

“Sir, we’re not the taco stand” I clearly remember an argument with my editor once where he stood there for half an hour trying to tell me that the shoot budget needed to come down and I tried to explain that no, if he wanted to pay less then we needed to change the shoot [...]

APhotoEditor Is Taking The Week Off

Floating down a river in Utah. See you next week.

Anna Wintour, Behind The Shades – CBS News

Wintour is involved in every detail of the magazine: the clothes, editing the pictures and articles. She is decisive, impatient and bears a look that says “I’m the boss, and you’re boring.”

NYC Police Operations Order Regarding Photography

1. Members of the service are reminded that photography and the videotaping of public places, buildings and structures are common activities within New York City. Given the City’s prominence as a tourist destination, practically all such photography will have no connection to terrorism or unlawful conduct. [...]
2. Members of the service may not demand to [...]

NYTimes R&D

Sports Illustrated’s Slide Show Book

Sports Illustrated has a new book out on May 5th called Slide Show that examines the actual physical slides from the images that made it into the magazine. They pulled their most famous and iconic shots from their archive of more than 750,000 original slides and photographed the mount with all the writing, marks and [...]

Why Would You Quit Working With A Freelancer

Jonathan a 3rd year photojournalism student at Ohio University’s School of Visual Communication has a Business Practices class taught by Professor, Marcy Nighswander (that’s what I’m told in an email anyways). For their first assignment she asked them to contact photo editors and ask them “to identify why they quit using a freelancer’s services [...]